TV and Movies

Children today are really missing out! They seldom experience the wonderful feeling of anticipation that we had, waiting for a movie to make its television premier. We had no DVDs, no VHSs, not even BETAs. We had an 8mm projector that had no sound. There were a few movies you could buy for those, but they were rather expensive. To see a movie, you had to go to the theater, or you had to wait for it to come to television, where it was riddled with ads. At least way back then (the Dark Ages, to my children), you only had two minutes of ads in each fifteen minute segment.

I seldom saw first run movies when I was young. We usually waited for them to hit the dollar theaters, if we were going to see them on the big screen at all. Most of my friends had been talking about them for over a month, usually two, or else they had already begun talking about the next movie. I was always hopelessly behind the times. Now, you might not even have to wait that long before the DVD comes out. It might be sitting on RedBox before I'm even aware that it has been released to the theaters.

See a movie a second time? Whoa! Now, that was radical. I never knew anyone who went to see a movie a second time. I did it once not long after I graduated from college (which was also in the dim, dark, ancient past). Most of us, if we wanted to see something again, waited for the late-night movies on TV (back when Tonight was the only live late night TV show, and the other channels ran movies).

Where's the wait? Where's the lesson in patience? Where's the opportunity to teach our children the value of delayed gratification? Gone forever! Children today are really missing out!